By the Late Gordon Cotton | Originally published in The Vicksburg Post on Sept. 1, 2013.

There’s a railroad track not very far from James Wilson’s house on Warriors Trail. It’s the same track on which he rode a train to Edwards each day when he was a high school student. Wilson has lived on Warriors Trail east of Vicksburg since he was four. He’s only about two houses down from where he grew up.

A builder and retired educator, he began his school career in Greenwood where he taught economics and political science at Broadstreet High School for a year before coming to his home turf in Warren County. He went to elementary school at Bovina in a small building, no longer there, which was right down from Bovina Grocery.

During the era of segregated schools, there wasn’t a high school in the county for black students; instead, they went to school in Vicksburg, the county paying tuition for each. It was after elementary and junior high school that Wilson went to Edwards, graduating from Southern Christian Institute, a facility in an antebellum setting on the outskirts of town; it was also known as Mount Beulah.

Wilson was part of a family with several children. His father worked for the railroad, and when he was old enough, at 17, James Wilson went to work for Anderson Tully.

He remembers cutting pulpwood when he was a youth, using a crosscut saw, work he laughingly recalls as “character building.” He served in the Air Force for four years, part of that time in Korea, and after he was discharged he began his college career, using the GI Bill. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tougaloo and a master’s in secondary administration from Jackson State. He received a AAA certification in academic and vocational guidance counseling from Mississippi College and an A and AA certificate in elementary from Jackson State University.

Wilson came back to Warren County where he taught eighth grade for a year before being named principal of Bovina. He later worked at Warren Central Junior High with Gerald Hasselman. There was a situation at Cedars that needed straightening out, he said — two administrators who couldn’t get along. Kalar Fultz, assistant superintendent of education for the county, thought he was the man for the job, so he went to Cedars, solved the problems, and later returned to Bovina.

Wilson, as did all other local students, grew up in segregated schools. As a student and as a teacher the black schools got the hand-me-downs — old books and equipment — but he credits Mrs. Fultz with working to help the schools and was instrumental in getting raises for deserving teachers.

When local schools were integrated in the late 1960s, he said “things went quite smooth. There were no problems that amounted to anything.”

The pinnacle of his career, Wilson said, was when he was named assistant superintendent of education for supportive services in the combined school districts in 1987. It was also about the hardest work he had done, for his job included a consolidation plan that decided where students went to school, moving faculty members to different schools, establishing an additional elementary school and creating a magnet school. In addition to the paperwork, the human factor was also involved.

“I think I did more work during those three years than in the previous years of my career,” he said.

As he didn’t spend many years in the classroom, he estimates that he taught about 700 students, but his efforts on their behalf were unending. He realized the need for counseling on the elementary level “because the smaller children have as many problems as the older students.”

He’s glad, he said, that he was in a position to help all the students, to get things done. He also remembers an earlier time when he helped them in a different way — that’s when he was the principal at Bovina.

He drove a bus to Possum Hollow, north of Oak Ridge. He was the custodian and did a lot of the janitorial duties, such as lighting the heaters on cold mornings. He was also his own secretary.

There weren’t many discipline problems, he said, “and I could handle them all. It wasn’t like it is now.” He said he simply followed the law and rules made by the board of education, and though sometimes people got angry, it never boiled over into fights or threatened lawsuits.

He has always recommended a strict dress code and thinks that if young men whose trousers are about to fall off knew the origin of the fad — homosexual acts in prison — they wouldn’t dress like that. It is also indecent exposure, he said.

Wilson retired from the school system in 1990 after 30 years on the job, and for 28 of those years, he never missed a day of work. Though he retired from one job, he had another: he had a construction company, Wilson Building of Vicksburg, Inc. It began after he had his home built and thought he would like to sell houses. He worked as an administrative assistant: “a bird dog, or something like that” and passed his real estate license test on the first try.

He began selling houses in an era when the government made it easier for blacks to own their own homes, most hadn’t had much, he said, and they were glad to get the opportunity to have nice homes. He worked in Warren and adjoining counties.

He can ride around and see much of the work his company has done. That also applies to his career in education. He touched a lot of lives and worked with a lot of wonderful people, he said In life, he said, “Educational achievement is the most important thing.”

Gordon Cotton (1936-2021) was a Vicksburg and Warren County icon who spent a lifetime learning and sharing history.